In a refrigeration circuit of this kind, the refrigerating fluid, driven by a compressor, is directed, in the superheated vapour phase, to the condenser, where it is successively cooled or "desuperheated", condensed into a hoe liquid phase, and then "supercooled" into a cold liquid phase.
The condensed and cooled refrigerating fluid is then sent, via a pressure reducing valve, to an evaporator, where it exchanges heat with a flow of air to be directed into the passenger compartment of the vehicle. In the evaporator, the refrigerating fluid is transformed into the vapour phase, whilst the flow of air is cooled in order to provide the conditioned air. The refrigerating fluid in the vapour phase leaves the evaporator and passes to the compressor, and so on.
A condenser of this kind is already known, from EP-A-0480330, in which the reservoir is connected to an intermediate point of the array of tubes situated between a first part of the array where the refrigerating fluid is condensed and a second part of the array where some of the condensed refrigerating fluid is supercooled.
In this known condenser, the reservoir receives some of the condensed hot refrigerating fluid in order to supercool it and separate the liquid and vapour phases of the refrigerating fluid. The latter is then supercooled further in the second part of the array.
The main drawback of this known solution is using the reservoir as a supercooling element containing the refrigerating fluid present in the form of a two-phase mixture at high temperature.
The particular aim of the invention is to overcome this drawback.